Films About Friendship

8 Films About Friendship That No Man Will Ever Forget

Stranger Things has been one of the biggest TV hits of the year, largely thanks to a core friendship group whose teasing, adventurous bond brings to mind the movies we all loved as kids. If you’ve already devoured the Netflix series in its entirety, here are eight movies to rewatch to recapture those days when your best buddies meant everything to you. We'd recommend watching from a den made from sofa cushions.

1. E.T.

Universal Pictures

Is there a greater film about friendship? Nope. Young Elliott is feeling lonely and confused in his broken family. Nobody understands him, until a saggy little outerspace dwarf crashes in his back garden. It puts you through the emotional ringer several times over before it gets to that heartbreaking ending. Childhood friendships are precious because sometimes, as much as you may not want them to, circumstances mean they have to end.

2. Stand By Me

Columbia Pictures

In the kind of dumbass scheme that only kids could dream up, four young boys decide they are going to become heroes by finding the dead body of a kid killed by a train. The journey they take changes them, not only because they confront death, but because they learn things about each other they never knew. It’s the rare childhood film that finishes by telling you what happened next. One strange day with your best friends can alter your world forever.

3. The Iron Giant

Warner Bros. Pictures

In the movies, your best friend doesn’t have to be human. Brad Bird’s adaptation of Ted Hughes’ book tells the story of a friendless boy, Hogarth, who forms a bond with a robot who crash-lands from outer space. The Iron Giant is a perfect story of childhood friendship because each teaches the other things they never knew about themselves. It was a flop on release, but it’s quite rightly become a modern classic.

4. Big

20th Century Fox

When you’re little, one of the things you want more than anything else in the world is to be older. To kids, the world is full of things they’re not allowed to do yet, that are solely the preserve of the grown-ups. Big taps into that desire as little Josh wishes to be older and wakes up the next day in the shape of Tom Hanks, giving one of his best performances. As he clatters his way through the mysterious adult world, in which everybody is still as clueless as your average 12-year-old, the only person who believes his bizarre story is his best friend, Billy. In the 80s, every American kid’s best friend was called Billy.

5. Monster House

Columbia Pictures

Every neighbourhood has that one house that, as a child, you knew with absolute certainty was inhabited by someone up to terrible things. This delightful animation has two friends, plus the local girl one of them madly fancies, venturing into the local creepy house and discovering it actually is as terrifying as they’d feared. It’s a horror movie for children, with animated kids so well written that they come to life.

6. My Girl

Columbia Pictures

Movies don’t depict friendships between boys and girls very often, at least not when they’re below their teenage years. This depicts an awkward girl, Vada, who hangs out with an even more awkward boy, Thomas, who has so many allergies that he can barely leave the house. There’s a friend for everyone out there, no matter how strange the world may consider them.

7. Super 8

Paramount Pictures

J.J. Abrams doing his best Spielberg, and making a pretty solid job of it. A group of children dream of being moviemakers. One night, while shooting one of their amateur films, an alien literally and noisily crashes into their lives. In common with Spielberg’s best, it does that lovely thing of making children’s problems seem every bit as real and important as those of the adults, treating them like whole people instead of talking down to them.

8. The Goonies

Warner Bros.

For any faults it has, the thing that has led The Goonies to be considered a classic of childhood is the richness of the friendships. This group can tease each other, sometimes cruelly when it’s directed at Chunk, and they’re all growing up at different rates, but when things get bad they’re all there for each other. Given how different all these kids are, you get the impression that some day soon, a while after their treasure-hunt is done, they will drift apart, but there will always be something connecting them.